Given that Havana is only around 230 miles away from Miami (and only 100 miles away from Key West along the coast), and has had a great influence on life in Miami, most obvious in Little Havana (which has lost a little of its authenticity as the tourist coaches have rolled in), it was good […]
What is left when a building decays and crumbles into a ruin as the roof falls in and then the floors? The strong stone walls may remain for a while, with the windows smashed, providing glimpses from the street into the roofless ruin and to the blue skies beyond. When the walls go, what remains? […]
It is good to see Cuban art gaining the reputation it deserves with an increasing number of exhibitions in London. Most notable was the retrospective at Tate Modern on Wilfredo Lam in 2017 while this summer there have been exhibitions of the work of Carlos Garaicoa at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art and […]
Two different artists, with a link about leaving their home country, in addition to their artistic style. Tess Jaray was born in Vienna in 1937, only to leave for England when her parents emigrated in 1938. She came from a creative and scientific family with her father being a chemical engineer and industrial inventor and […]
What would a 20th or 21st century mausoleum look like? Very often, traditional in form, following Classical, Gothic, Egyptian or Byzantine precedents, the last century has seen more modern examples such as the famous art deco chapel by Lalique in Havana and Pedro Matos’ modern vault for the Gomes family in Póvoa de Varzim in Portugal. […]
A father, mother and child, desperate to seek a new life, float helplessly across the shark-infested waters between Cuba and Florida in a raft made of tyres, with no sail or oars. Hanging down are Polaroid photographs of real-life experiences attached to the painting. A small naked man stands trying to pull a huge floating cloud […]
Hand in hand, lovers stroll along the Malecon. The rolling sea crashes onto the rocks under the romantic Cuban sky with the wild beat of Latin American music floating across from the open windows of the nearby buildings. The change comes quickly – black clouds approach and the sea heaves as the wind blows the […]
There is a strong tradition of poster and graphic art in Cuba. It continues in Miami with the work of artists such as ILLICIT who, taking the example of Banksy and other street artists, seeks to maintain the mystery of anonymity, though there is a family link with Little Havana. His work is sharp, graphic […]
The area between Angel and Hoxton in London is a mass of building sites as this area is gradually redeveloped, taking advantage of the canals which provide fingers of water onto which many of the new residential apartments will face. In amongst this redevelopment are two old, but transformed, warehouse buildings, Nos 14 and 16 […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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